So I'm leaving later this evening for the Resnet Conference, which is being held down at Stanford this year. And I'm not particularly looking forward to it, to say the least. My managers wanted me to go, because I'm one of the more important student staff in the organization, and they felt that I might gain useful insight into the way other residential networks do things. So I looked at the list of programs, and didn't see anything which particularly interested me. So I asked "Do I have to go? I don't see anything that jumps out me."
Apparently, "Do I have to go?" translates to "Yes, you can go all three days!" And to make matters worse, I'm the only student who is actually going all three days.
Now, why does this conference irritate me, besides the part where the topics don't interest me? Well, because Berkeley is unique, in that 98% of our organization is students, and the students really run the place. Our students are trusted, and mostly responsible. However, other organizations don't trust their student staff nearly as much, and refer to them as "kids", and in general, I'm probably going to spend the whole weekend being ignored and talked down to because I'm "just" student staff. So I've got my laptop, and I've got a book, and I've got my Game Boy Advance (well, that probably won't go very far towards making them not think of me as a kid), and I'll try to have fun and learn something, because going in with this attitude is only going to leave me hating the experience all the more.
And of course, being at Stanford isn't going to be all that pleseant either -- it'll probably be a lot warmer there than Berkeley. And I'll be in "Gates Hall" a lot of the time.